


More than I've ever felt before

by Limeritry



Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: F/F, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Micah appears a ridiculous amount for someone who never actually shows up proper
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-26
Updated: 2020-11-26
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:09:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27723959
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Limeritry/pseuds/Limeritry
Summary: “Does this disgust you?” Shadow Weaver asked."Don't be ridiculous," Castaspella said. "Your face is the part of you that disgusts me the least."
Relationships: Castaspella/Shadow Weaver | Light Spinner (She-Ra)
Comments: 14
Kudos: 47





	More than I've ever felt before

Castaspella remembered Light Spinner largely through the prism of Micah.

She remembered walking for the first time through Mystacor’s grand, tall corridors, passing the statues and cowering under the dusty weight of the legacy that she was presuming to inherit. She looked up into the stone face of the veiled woman, and Micah’s hand wrapped around her own.

“Aren’t you excited, Casta?” he asked, smiling as if he might burst from happiness. The apprentice’s robes hung loose and large on, but they didn’t make him look small at all. They were just marking all the room that he had to grow, the potential that he hadn’t yet begun to fulfil. Castaspella turned away from the cold stone, towards the burning weight of a closer, dearer legacy.

“So much,” she said, more nervous than anything, and they walked on.

She remembered sitting in the class on illusions and copying the rune circles from the board. A veiled woman who looked vaguely familiar had been their instructor, and when her name was called there had been a slight pause. The instructor looked as if she had been about to say something, but then Castaspella’s illusion had collapsed in a rather alarming fashion, sparks of light exploding off what should have been a phoenix but looked more like a plucked turkey, and whatever she had been about to say was swallowed in favour of guidance and low-voiced adjustments.

She remembered Light Spinner as the bright smile on Micah’s face, a trailing hem, a tall silhouette in the shadow of her brother. She remembered Micah’s spells increasing by leaps and bounds, his coursework growing more and more advanced, and when she pouted and asked where he was learning everything the answer became, almost invariably, Light Spinner. She was the reason for his joy, his improvement, his increasingly commonplace absence.

She remembered practicing her fundamentals with the other younger apprentices, drawing ellipses and other, non-circular shapes in the air with a wavering hand when an alarm sounded. The instructors had gathered them up, prows pinched with worry and confusion. She had looked behind, and caught in the corner of her eye a great mass of shadows dissipating in the morning sunlight, to reveal a bent, hunched form. She would have screamed, but an instructor herded her away.

The details of the incident would not be clear or of interest to her for many years. All she remembered, and all she cared about at first, was Micah, gone pale and quiet overnight. He would touch his face sometimes, in turns wonderingly and furiously. Light Spinner had gone, and seemed to have taken Micah’s spirit with her. Gone was the boisterous, reckless boy who had strode so far in front of her, so far as to be unreachable. Castaspella had gotten used to being left in the dust, and she had not known what to do with the boy suddenly at her side, still miles away but in other directions now, other than take his hand when he sat for long, still hours in her room.

She hated Light Spinner for Micah, because of him. She hated her for taking him away, and giving him back.

Castaspella didn’t need any such conduits to hate Shadow Weaver. She’d felt the fury bubble when permutations of Mystacor’s spells started appearing on the battlefield. She’d gripped her staff and clenched her teeth when the Horde’s strange technology started being ringed with familiar runework. Mystacor’s crown had sat heavy on her head, and the shadow of Light Weaver’s statue had whispered like forgotten legacy brought out into the light.

Strangely enough, she never broached the topic with Micah. They talked about it, of course, in the sense that they pored over tomes together, working to counter these strange, dark spells, powered with more magic than either of them could summon in a lifestyle. But they never sat and talked about Micah’s old teacher who had gone insane and run off to help the enemy, leaving the rest of Mystacor to deal with the fallout. They didn’t talk about the shadowed statue. They didn’t talk about Micah marrying far, far away from everything that had happened, leaving Mystacor’s heavy, dusty legacy to weigh upon her head. They each had their crowns now.

Then Micah died.

Castaspella heard the news second-hand from her sister-in-law. Queen Angella, commander of the forces. Castaspella looked at her, and pulled out of the war.

In a way, she had hated Shadow Weaver for Micah as well.

Castaspella met Shadow Weaver properly for the first time when she snuck past Mystacor’s wards for the primary purpose of, seemingly, traumatising Glimmer’s new friend. A mass of shadows roared up, encircling her, and red eyes snapped open from among the mass. A figure took form amidst the darkness in a familiar shape. Castaspella narrowed her eyes, and Adora burst in through the door.

Afterwards, Adora blamed herself. It was an untimely echo of Micah, all those years ago, and Castaspella said what she wished she had said to him, all these years later, her brother dead, her niece grown, her sister-in-law estranged.

“Nonsense,” she said. And then, “I’ll knit you a sweater.”

Wow, Castaspella thought on meeting Shadow Weaver for the second time, this bitch. And she clenched her fist so she wouldn’t clock the other woman – now defenceless – in the face. It was a close thing. She hated Shadow Weaver even more intensely now, focused through the two lenses of her brother, an old pain, and her niece, a newer, sharper hurt.

Shadow Weaver looked up at them, lounging on the couch in Angella’s dungeon. Side room. What even _was_ Bright Moon, that their dungeons looked like that? Her childhood dorms had been more imposing. Mystacor’s corridors had scared her, when she was a little girl, and its lonely rooms were often hardly differentiable from cells in the late night, when she was struggling with a bit of theory and felt as if she was drowning.

The interrogations went nowhere. Angella’s presence thrummed behind her, and Shadow Weaver’s cracked mask faced her. It’s strange placidity reminded her of stone.

“Are you sure you’re Micah’s sister?” Shadow Weaver said in a long drawl, and Castaspella growled. A spike of anger. She took a step forward.

“She’s trying to get under our skin,” Angella said behind her. _Don’t let her_ went without saying. Castaspella hated Shadow Weaver by proxy, by conduit. She sucked in a breath, took stock of what they had gotten from the hours spent talking in circles. Nothing, but scars re-opened, bruises poked at, old history dug up with knives.

And besides, she thought, when she opened her eyes again. She’s dying.

Shadow Weaver had sprawled herself in a way that looked almost graceful rather than as if she no longer had the energy to hold herself up. Her gem set in her mask was cracked down the middle, dull and dark. The crack was a shadow, revealing nothing. Shadow Weaver’s hair fell in a limp mass, her dress a puddle of fabric gathered loosely at her feet. She was bent, hunched over. She looked like a shadow dissipating in the sunlight.

Castaspella pulled Angella out into the hallway.

“This isn’t working,” she said. “We’ve tried everything, and her condition is growing worse.”

Then, because she had always had a ruthless streak: “Perhaps we should let Adora – “

Angella dismissed the suggestion off the bat. Castaspella was reminded, in that sudden, jolting way sometimes, that as much as Castaspella would have preferred otherwise, Angella hadn’t just been the convenient destination for Micah’s flight from Mystacor. She had been the pull, the beacon, the love of his life.

It always came back somehow, this woman in the hallways and that woman in the dungeon, to Micah and everything she felt through him.

“I despise you,” she announced to Shadow Weaver’s back. The two guards shuffled nervously, seemingly unsure of who they should be guarding against. “Stay away from my niece.”

“Glimmer,” Shadow Weaver sighed. “She’s so much like Micah, isn’t she? So much potential, and no one to draw it out.”

Her pruning shears clipped. A branch, misshapen, fell from the vine. Castaspella ground her teeth, told herself she was not in the business of physically assaulting old, helpless women, and left.

Shadow Weaver, Castaspella noticed, stared at magic like a starving creature with ravening, roaming eyes. It was most obvious with Glimmer and Adora, where her seduction would meet supplication in reverent manipulation. It was less obvious with Castaspella herself. She’d thrown light into the air once, a simple spell, the most basic thing they taught new apprentices, when a stretch of corridor had been dimmer than she’d liked. She’d looked behind her and seen Shadow Weaver, standing in the corner like she’d been frozen to the stop. She was in shadow, as if she still commanded any mastery over the darkness. Her whole body had turned towards that simple, orb of light: they watched each other, frozen.

Castaspella crushed the light in her palm, and walked briskly down the rest of the hallway.

She gripped Angella by the arm when she left, hissing _be careful_ , because hadn’t she seen that cocktail of devotion and callous usage before? Micah and his long shadow. Castaspella had never been in Micah’s shadow. She was too far behind for it to even reach her.

The flowers in Shadow Weaver’s garden had bloomed and Angella was dead. The coronation was today, the preparations were a mess, her head buzzed from it. Everything had to be perfect. Angella was dead.

Castaspella paused by Shadow Weaver’s garden. It was empty. She was probably out. A waft of flowery perfume, and presumably pollen, floated from the room. She sneezed. She could identify some of those plants, from old spellbooks. It was, frankly, a little pathetic.

She moved on.

Micah, she received word, was alive. Her world spun. She fell back on her lonely throne and felt the terrible irony of it all, even the joy that was bubbling, unfairly through her. After all these years, Micah.

She lost him in a matter if months. They’d barely talked – he’d had so much to process, his wife dead, his daughter grown and gone, the world in chaos and Bright Moon lost. She’d thought they would have more time, afterwards.

She walked through the ruined camp, listened to Perfuma’s panicked plans and watched Shadow Weaver walk through the glade as if it were her right. Nothing, Castaspella reflected bitterly, had ever managed fully to excise Shadow Weaver’s presence. No light bright enough, no spell strong enough. When all the beacons winked out, she was still stuck with this – this –

“How did the Rebellion lose so many of our finest members,” she said, just short of a hiss, “and yet we’re still stuck with _you_.”

And somehow, it came back again, the endless loops of her life.

“if you want to save Micah,” Shadow Weaver said, and Castaspella was already gone, wasn’t she? those had always been the terms of this relationship, Micah, Glimmer, “come with me.”

 _She’s up to something_ , Castaspella thought resignedly, and wasn’t even surprised when Shadow Weaver all but said it too.

Nonetheless, she agreed. She would be loathe, she thought, looking around the ruined camp, to put even more children in Shadow Weaver’s path.

She stepped straight into Shadow Weaver’s space, let the thrum of magic come up under her skin. There it was, the hunger in her eyes. Castaspella had more magic than Shadow Weaver would ever possess again.

“If you try anything,” she said, like the threat it was, “I won’t hesitate to strike you down.”

Shadow Weaver looked at her, laughed, leaned in and pulled away.

She looked at the slumbering magic of Etheria and felt wonder for the first time since she was a child, and had seen light birds swooping through the air. Impossible, incredible, beautiful. Sparks rose just above her hand and she followed them with her eyes. This tangible presence, this magic so freely given. Life. She could feel the planet breathe, its breaths an echo of her own shifting diaphragm. Some part of her, the little girl who had walked first into Mystacor’s halls, was shaking. A smile spread half-disbelieving across her face.

Another hand swooped in, pointed and gloved in red. It caught the sparks in its palm and curled its fingers around them. Castaspella noticed, with a sudden swoop of her stomach, that Shadow Weaver had begun to speak in a dim echo of that assertive, low tone that she had heard levied against Glimmer, Adora, once upon a time Micah. Again, talk of power. She could feel Shadow Weaver’s breath on the back of her neck, her long hair brushing against her elbows. She pulled away.

“You just want to take the magic for yourself,” she accused.

“I want,” Shadow Weaver said slowly, enunciating very deliberately, “to save Micah.”

And there he was again. Castaspella had almost forgotten the terms of their relationship, but there he was, engraved like a brand between them. The Gordian knot of her brother, back from the dead. Without him, she realised suddenly, they would be nothing to each other.

“I owe him that much, at least,” Shadow Weaver continued snappishly, before her tone fell back into a low cadence. “Come with me. Help me undo what the First Ones did, and – “ she paused, “stop me if I try to take the power for myself.”

 _Well_ , Castaspella thought, _this is a bit far from what I had expected_. She had not expected sincerity. Shadow Weaver did not peddle in sincerity. Yet even now, her eyes roamed the clearing like she was famished. If there was anything Castaspella could believe of Shadow Weaver, it was that the woman loved magic. She could also be persuaded that Shadow Weaver’s feelings towards Micah were not all terrible, manipulative things. It was a cruel thing to come to terms with, and she hated her a little more for it. Nonetheless, it was the truth: exploitation, protection, stewardship, manipulation, guidance. Hardly an attractive mix, but devastatingly sincere.

Perhaps she felt she had nothing to gain from Castaspella’s good regard, unlike Glimmer, unlike her brother. Nothing Shadow Weaver could say would make Castaspella regard her with any less suspicion. Castaspella did not, after all, hate Shadow Weaver for herself. Perhaps that was exactly what was needed.

Driven by the looming apocalypse and the shadow of her brother, she reached for the other woman’s hand.

Castaspella was almost certain that Shadow Weaver had not manipulated her into falling into bed with her. No, that would be entirely the result of her own bad decisions.

It happened as the result of an argument. Surprisingly, the argument itself wasn’t particularly charged. It was simply like any other debate between consummate professionals, over a disagreement in theory and craft which would have no lasting effects on the enduring respect between them. At the end of it, Castaspella’s sanity endured a temporary lapse, and she turned and pressed her lips right up to Shadow Weaver’s cold mask.

She felt the other woman stiffen. _Dear God_ , she thought for one electrifying moment, and she didn’t know what she was afraid of.

Then Shadow Weaver relaxed, pulled her arms around her, stung her with two pointed barbs but did not refuse. _She’s using me_ , Castaspella thought, and the world was back to rights again. Her lips were cold from the metal of the mask. Micah was nowhere to be seen.

“Does this disgust you?” Shadow Weaver asked her, two handwidths apart on the same bed. The moon was particularly bright that night, and the cloth walls of the tent were not enough to cast a more encompassing darkness. Instead, the muted glow fell like an inverted shadow, catching on the creases of the blankets, glossing over skin, swallowed in the black of Shadow Weaver’s hair. The criss-cross scars over her face were just visible, snaking like shadows down her neck, past her collarbones, further still. Her slitted eyes blinked, reptilian, the only bright thing in the dark.

Castaspella barely paused before replying. She took a passing glance at the ruined face, and snorted. “Don’t be ridiculous,” she said, and pressed a hand to her mouth as she yawned. Shadow Weaver lay next to her, elevated on one elbow, motionless. “Your face is the part of you that disgusts me the least.”

From behind her closed eyelids, she heard Shadow Weaver’s low, sardonic chuckle. She waited for another remark, some neat retort to wrap up the exchange. The silence stretched for so long Castaspella fell asleep instead.

She dreamed of birds made of light, swooping in endless circles. A scarred woman sitting in a glade, telling her _this is everything you will ever want_. Her brother, looking at her as if she had never seen him, as if he had never seen her.

She woke up to the chirping of birds and Shadow Weaver, mask put firmly back in place.

“Let’s get back to work,” she said, already trailing out of the tent, hungry like a starved thing. She spared a single backwards glance.

Castaspella followed.

**Author's Note:**

> I have nothing to say for myself.


End file.
